Who We Are
Healthy Youth Alliance (HYA) is a coalition of organizations and individuals, community organizers and public policy directors, sexual health educators and state agencies. HYA envisions a Washington State where all young people have access to high quality, medically accurate, and comprehensive sexual health education, improving their overall health and safety.
And we want YOU to join us!
Healthy Youth Alliance was formed to help ensure that the youth of Washington State receive sexual health information that is medically accurate and reflects the values of all individuals. We do this by promoting education and awareness about lifelong sexual health and decision-making among young people of WA State. For a complete list of our members, please click here.
What We Do
Healthy Youth Alliance helps Washington State school districts to implement the Healthy Youth Act, ensuring their sexual health curricula comply with the law. We help mobilize communities so that school boards can approve and implement a sexual health curriculum policy with vocal support behind them. We provide training in several sexual health education curricula. We are also a resource when it comes to the history of sex education in Washington State, current national and state news about the issue, and up-to-date information on funding for these efforts.
Members of HYA (Cardea and DOH) are funded to implement the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP). PREP is part of a federal grant to educate youth on pregnancy prevention and other life skills. The Washington Youth Sexual Health (WYSH) Plan is an unfunded guide for planning programs, informing policy, procuring funding, and educating stakeholders to support the sexual health of Washington’s youth.
Why Our Work is Important
The Healthy Youth Act, passed in 2007, says: if a school district teaches sexual health education, it must adhere to OSPI’s Guidelines for Sexual Health and Disease Prevention. That means the curriculum must stress abstinence, teach about condoms and contraception, be inclusive of all students and families, and be medically accurate. However, there is no funding for enforcement, so it is up to the community to ensure the letter of the law is followed. Healthy Youth Alliance helps lead this grass roots effort in Washington State.
In the sex education movement, there are a lot of technical words and acronyms thrown around. Please see our handy dandy glossary.
